"Well, then, maybe he should consider taking in older students,"
Mrs. Shigeno suggested, and the gentle mood of the discussion was restored.
2
Dr. Koga had asked Kizu for a painting for his clinic, based on a sketch he liked, and after it was finished, Kizu took it over himself to the riverside.
He had had the frame made in the woodworking shop that, he was told, had originally been set up by the former Base Movement, a workshop that had for a time been absorbed into the Church of the Flaming Green Tree and afterward continued as an independent operation. Kizu was quite impressed that the cultural movement begun in this mountainous region by young people some forty years ago had been so carefully maintained. Apply a little stimu- lus, he mused, and in a short time it could easily be revived on a larger scale.
One of the Technicians who had been helping outfit the clinic fixed a nail on the freshly painted wooden wall, and Dr. Koza and Kizu hung the painting on it. Dr. Koga looked steadily at the work, a portrait of Ikuo, naked from the waist up.
"Is this work a study for a tableau?"
"I did the sketch with that in mind," Kizu replied. "I haven't done any real painting for a long time, and I haven't formed any particular plan. In my own defense I should say that I'm searching as I draw."
"As long as you continue in this vein," Dr. Koga said, "I have no doubt you'll end up with a magnificent painting… Since models all have a unique shape, character, and movement, is your main focus then the outer surface?
Or are you influenced by the inner world of the model?"
"I'm not sure I make a distinction between the two. Especially with this model. It's as if as I drew his shape I gradually came to a greater under- standing of his inner being, which leads me to confirm how very appealing he is."
"Now that you've settled here, why not use it as an opportunity to begin a large-scale painting? There's a lot of space to hang such a work in the chapel."
"That's a thought," Kizu replied. He appeared to be considering the suggestion seriously. "A series of events happened in Tokyo, but well before that I was planning to paint a tableau based on a biblical theme. The first time I met Ikuo, in fact, he told me he was interested in the illustrations of the Bible I'd done for a children's picture book."
Although the walls and ceiling were freshly painted, the desks and chairs neat and tidy, the clinic overall had an old-fashioned look to it. Dr. Koga was seated beside the window looking out on the road, but since the Technicians had taken all the chairs for patients out to the courtyard to repair them, the only place for Kizu to sit was on the examination bed. Dr. Koga looked at him with invigorated eyes. All of a sudden, as if finally getting to the heart of the matter, he said, "How about using Ikuo as your model for Jonah? He seems to have an unusual interest in that book."
"We've discussed the book of Jonah before. He's talked about it with you too?"
"There seems to be some reason behind his interest," Dr. Koga said, suppressing a faint smile but not adding any details.
Kizu changed the topic. "Were you aware that the women's group that's moved into the Hollow does not include all the women who were living along the Odakyu Line?"
"I'd heard something about that. One of the fellows in my group is a friend of one of the women, and after they moved here they had a lot to talk about."
"It must have taken a great deal of resolve for them to break up the group they'd lived with for ten years, leave the children behind, and come here."
"It's the same with the Technicians-only half of those remaining from the former radical faction at Izu have moved here. There's another thing I've been thinking about, Professor Kizu. According to the mayor, there used to be a movement to change people's lifestyles here called the Base Movement."
"As a matter of fact," Kizu responded, "the frame for this painting came from the woodworking shop that was started by them and was later absorbed by the Church of the Flaming Green Tree."
"Don't you think what we're trying to do here is to build a kind of base ourselves-for a new church? There will be lots of people who don't move here but who come on a pilgrimage to this holy site to hear Patron's sermons, so in that sense this place will function as a kind of home base."
"Patron told me he's going to be busy with some sort of project here for the next six months or a year," Kizu said. "I don't think he said this just to encourage a sick person like myself."
Dr. Koga examined Kizu with the conscientious eyes of a veteran phy- sician and then turned his gaze outside, to the peeling wall of the now-unused sake warehouse across the narrow road, a wall that had a quiet antique look.
"Ikuo has the same idea," Dr. Koga said. "He was interested in the house we had after we were forced to leave the Izu facility, less a secret hid- ing place than a kind of liaison office, and dropped by to see us. He negoti- ated a lot of things between us and Patron's office. It seemed clear enough at the last meeting that his goal was to connect up with the more radical members of the faction.
"I was surprised to find that the members who moved here as a group are all intent on working at the Farm. But that sort of thing happens, I sup- pose. I don't expect that'll mean they'll be going the way of the Quiet Women, praying all the time. They have a plan of action, though they're not insisting on any outward, daring type of thing. They're like a bunch of bored dilet- tantes, hard to get worked up about anything.
"The gathering where they debated Guide aggravated the opposition within the group and forced them to split in two. They all agreed to the debate, and even members who had never shown their faces at our liaison office showed up for it. But once the meeting started it was the more radical group that took over. The moderate faction's motivation for attending, to hear about Patron's recent religious activities, went out the window. In the recording of the brutalizing that Dancer spoke of, there was a proposal made to let Guide go. I sided with the moderate faction on this. But a dispute arose and we were kept from further participation, after which the tragedy unfolded.
"With the interrogation of Guide still continuing at that point, it's no wonder people say it was irresponsible for the moderates to withdraw. Espe- cially for me, as a doctor. But Guide really wanted us to leave. I think deep down his attitude was similar to that of the moderate faction, myself included, who wanted somehow to express ourselves after Patron's ten years of silence.
I think he let them interrogate and torment him at will because he wanted, if worse came to worst, to let them find shelter in a place where the authorities wouldn't pursue them.
"Guide accepted the invitation for the meeting, after all, but was less concerned about me and the moderate faction than in searching out some accommodation, some third way, with a group that even after ten years was still pretty radical. Wasn't it precisely because those radical members would be there that he accepted the invitation at such short notice? But Guide's third way and the expectations of the radical group were completely at odds, which explains what took place."
"The more I listen to you," Kizu said, "the more I feel the reason Ikuo got close to you all was because he was attracted to these more extreme rem- nants of the radical faction."
"To me," Dr. Koga said, "Ikuo is a Jonah-type personality, which leads me to hope you'd express this in your painting. I guess I'm hoping your paint- ing will help me grasp who he really is. He's going to play an important role in Patron's new church, but there's one thing about him I don't quite under- stand that I'd like to-"